Tourism rates in 2024 are expected to match pre-pandemic levels, boosted by the Olympics in Paris, Euro 2024 in Germany and the gig-tripping trend. For this intelligence, we review alternative datasets that can help track this sector in a more timely manner.

SETTING THE SCENE

The tourism industry can be volatile. Travel for leisure is considered consumer discretionary spending and, as such, it depends on consumer confidence. Economic crises, geopolitical tensions and foreign exchange rates can all affect demand across various travel-related sectors, including short-term rentals, hotels, cruises, airlines, online travel agents (OTAs), global distribution systems (GDSs) and amusement parks. More broadly, tourism can also affect real estate in key markets.

With this in mind, tracking tourism trends can add value for investors. The UNWTO, an authoritative source, even offers a free global tourism tracker – which predicts international tourism rates are set to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024. However, it suffers from significant data lags and annual data delivery – unsuitable for most trading strategies.

In this 2021 paper, the authors state that web traffic and sentiment datasets can be used to forecast tourism. Alongside that, we have identified a few additional dataset types that could also be used to track the upturn of this sector:

• Listings and reservations/bookings data
• Transaction data (includes ticket sales data)
• Mobility, transport and footfall data 
• Travel-related sentiment data